Wickersham's Consciencehttps://wickershamsconscience.wordpress.com
Commentary, Reviews and Nature PhotographySat, 17 Feb 2018 13:20:17 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/236bef337cd04ac88bc2e3eb21b4ab01?s=96&d=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.wp.com%2Fi%2Fbuttonw-com.pngWickersham's Consciencehttps://wickershamsconscience.wordpress.com
Return of Bird of the Week: Cinnamon Flycatcherhttps://wickershamsconscience.wordpress.com/2018/02/17/return-of-bird-of-the-week-cinnamon-flycatcher/
https://wickershamsconscience.wordpress.com/2018/02/17/return-of-bird-of-the-week-cinnamon-flycatcher/#respondSat, 17 Feb 2018 13:15:58 +0000http://wickershamsconscience.wordpress.com/?p=71968Without exaggeration, there are hundreds of New World flycatcher species. For this week’s Bird of the Week, we’ll head to the tropics, for one of the prettiest, the Cinnamon Flycatcher.

Cinnamon Flycatcher, Manu Road, Peru

The cinnamon and brown-green coloration is lovely. It’s fairly common bird on both the east and west slopes of the Andes, from Venezuela down to Bolivia. It’s often seen in mixed flocks and seems to hang around after the rest of the birds have moved along. The species also lets WC show off the difference in image quality in low light between his Canon 1D-X and the old Olympus E-5 used in this next photo from 2011.

The White House has been caught in a flat-out lie about what they knew and when about disgraced West Wing staffer Rob Porter. The Trump Administration – and specifically Chief of Staff John Kelly – continued to employ an egregious domestic violence offender for six months, even granting him interim security clearances.
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Top American intelligence officials warned that Russia is already using a digital strategy to worsen United States’ political and social divisions, spreading disinformation. They have told the White House. And the Trump Administration has responded by . . . doing nothing. Well, not quite nothing; President Trump talked to V. Putin who assured him it was all untrue. And, in the meantime, President Trump has assured us that it’s all fake news.
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Michael Cohen, President Trump’s personal lawyer, admitted – boasted, really – that he had personally paid the $130,000 to Stormy Daniels to hush up her affair with President Trump. Cohen said because he paid the money, there were no campaign finance violations. Apparently, Mr. Cohen sees nothing wrong with pimping for the president of the United States. Cohen’s disclosures beg the question of whether Trump directed him to make the payment. How is it that Cohen still has a license to practice law? Can you imagine the Republican firestorm if Bill Clinton’s lawyer had paid hush money to Monica Lewinsky?
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The President is giving himself a $30 million military parade. Never mind revealing a budget that will create a $7 trillion – that’s trillion with a “t” – budget deficit over the next ten years. And that’s probably a low estimate, understated by wildly optimistic projections of economic growth. Sure, Presidential budgets are near to meaningless, but ou have to wonder what exactly it is that Republicans believe in.

In a longer time scale, it took no special skill for WC to predict an inflation spike in response to the recent tax bill and President Trump’s increased federal spending. Prices rose 0.5 percent last month and 2.1 percent over the past 12 months. By Federal Reserve standards, that’s an unacceptably high inflation rate. The Fed will have to raise interest rates in response.

Three more years?

[Shudder]

Some commentators have called it a dumpster fire. The stench of corruption is certainly similar, but the metaphor fails to capture the human suffering that’s involved. ↩

Dear Carolyn: My boss is a highly respected, highly placed person. He got himself into a jam by keeping a serial wife-beater around on our staff. He got caught recently when folks found out he’d known for a long time what the wife-beater had done. Now he’s trying to get himself out of the jam by telling his staff to lie about what he knew and when. What should I do?

(Asking for a friend)

— Sarah H.S. in D.C.

Sarah H.S. in D.C.: Is your “friend” being paid enough to risk jail time? Because that’s where this path leads. Ask John Dean. The thing about lying for your boss is that eventually the lies will come out, and then your “friend’s” fate will be as bad or worse as your boss’s. Usually worse, because the big players often skate and examples are made of the less powerful employees who went along.

On the other hand, if you don’t care about your personal reputation, don’t care about your credibility, don’t have any principles and don’t have any plans for the next 3 to 5 years, sure, go along with your boss’s directions. But a boss who will order his employees to lie to save his own skin will sell you – your “friend” – out with without hesitation.

There’s no question that the all-time record for failed attempts to pass the Alaska Bar Examination belongs to Tom Obermeyer. WC may have lost count, but it’s at least thirty-three times. Tom has failed despite individual tutorials and coaching from the Alaska Bar Association – something never offered to any other bar exam candidate.

There’s also no question that Theresa Nangle Obermeyer’s principal obsession is her husband’s multiple failures to pass the bar exam. It’s not her only obsession, Bog knows, but it’s the primary one.

Look, WC passed the Alaska Bar Exam on his first try, so it can’t be that hard.

But Tom Obermeyer can’t. Or, perhaps, won’t, because failing the bar exam is the one thing Tom can do to defy his wife. It’s complicated.

Theresa constructed an elaborate fantasy about Tom’s shortcomings, in which the late Senator Ted Stevens was the villain who kept Tom from passing the Bar exam. And how Stevens himself had cheated to become a lawyer. That fantasy helped drive her to run against Stevens for the U.S. Senate. She won the primary, running as a Democrat. The video of her 1996 “debate” with Senator Stevens is a classic, in an utterly appalling sort of way. Theresa finished dead last in the general election, behind even the Green Party candidate.1

Before that Theresa was on the Anchorage School Board where she engendered a kind of pure chaos that brought a decently-administered school district to its knees. For WC, one of the wonderful Carol Comeau‘s greatest accomplishments as Assistant Superintendent and Superintendent of the Anchorage School District was undoing the damage Theresa Obermeyer caused.

Long before the alt-right was a thing, Theresa had developed a finely honed skill at seeing conspiracies. They were everywhere. You didn’t even have to ask her.

WC knows that’s her world view because for a while WC was himself a target of Theresa Obermeyer. She decided that WC’s contrarianism on a couple of minor issues facing the Alaska Bar made him her ally. You know, “The enemy of my enemy.” She somehow obtained or guessed WC’s direct line office telephone number. When WC attempted to explain he had nothing to say to Obermeyer and didn’t want her to keep calling, Theresa asked, “How did Ted Stevens get to you?” WC responded, quoting Ted Stevens, “Theresa, get help.” And then had the telephone company change his direct line number.

So, you ask, what is Theresa Obermeyer doing now? WC hasn’t a clue. And couldn’t care less. She’s been mostly silent since 2012 or so.2

WC, for one, is grateful.

You could make the case that Theresa’s campaign was handicapped by the 29 days she spent in prison when her probation was revoked after repeated probation violations. But probably not. It was time she was silent, generally more helpful than times she can communicate. ↩

As late as April 2013, Tom was still complaining that the Alaska Bar Exam was unfair and was awaiting the result os his latest bar exam (spoiler alert: he failed). ↩

]]>https://wickershamsconscience.wordpress.com/2018/02/14/thirty-three-times/feed/0TObermeyerwickershamsconscienceTheresa Obermeyer, 1995Whatever Happened To?https://wickershamsconscience.wordpress.com/2018/02/13/whatever-happened-to/
https://wickershamsconscience.wordpress.com/2018/02/13/whatever-happened-to/#respondTue, 13 Feb 2018 13:15:47 +0000http://wickershamsconscience.wordpress.com/?p=71940One of the signature characteristics of Alaska is that people come and go. Including WC. Some stay longer – more than 60 years in WC’s case. Some a lot less. Like sometime gubernatorial candidate and convicted criminal John Lindauer. WC often wonders what happened to, among many others:

Shelia Toomey, who for decades researched and wrote the Alaska Ear, the closest thing to a gossip column to ever grace an Alaska newspaper. The end of the Alaska Ear four years ago for WC marked the start of the long, sad decline of the Anchorage Daily News. What is Sheila Toomy doing now? Why did we lose the Ear?

And what about John Lindauer? Among the rogues, crooks, con artists and loonies who have graced Alaska politics since statehood Lindauer stands out as the gubernatorial candidate who saw his campaign fall apart like a wet Kleenex. The only governor candidate to be convicted of an electioneering crime. Where did he perform and what were his 200 hours of community service, for example? Inquiring minds want to know.

Ben Stevens, former State senator and Unindicted

Then there’s Ben Stevens, the late Uncle Ted’s eldest child. Somehow, whether through prosecutorial incompetence or political influence, he escaped criminal charges for his numerous conflicts of interest, apparent bribe acceptance and egregious attempts at influence-peddling. Whatever happened to Ben? He’s now president of Cook Inlet Tug and Barge, a unit of tug company Foss Maritime.

More recently, there’s Sean Parnell, good old Captain Zero himself, who assumed office after The Quitter decided Alaska was too small, and was elected by foolish voters to a four year term. Parnell set a new low mark for ineffective, corrupt governors, taking the trophy from the late Keith Miller. When last heard from, the Captain had sworn off politics and set up a private law practice in Palmer. Hey. he’s not a registered lobbyist yet.

If you have names to add to Alaska’s list of true characters who have disappeared from the public scene, pass them along to WC who will have a look at them.

A reproduction of the Tsar Bomba, the biggest nuclear weapon ever detonated, at the Nuclear Weapons Museum at RFNC-VNIIEF in Sarov (via Wikimedia)

What could possibly go wrong?

The All-Russian Research Institute of Experimental Physics — the Russian Federation Nuclear Center facility where scientists designed the Soviet Union’s first nuclear bomb — is a top secret facility in Sarov, Russia. Don’t bother looking for Sarov on an older map; the site is so secret that it wasn’t shown on Soviet-era maps. In fact, Sarov is still a “closed” city, meaning that access to Sarov is restricted, and no one who does not live in the city is allowed to visit without hard-to-get, official permission. Foreigners visiting on official business have to surrender their passports, cell phones, and other electronic devices at the city’s entrance checkpoints.1

The All-Russian Research Institute of Experimental Physics is the former Soviet Union’s premier research and development center for nuclear weapons. The first Soviet atomic bomb was developed here in the late 1940s, after which the center continued as a center for nuclear weapons research. It is pretty much the Los Alamos of Russia.2 And, like Los Alamos, there is important, highly secret research still going on there. And, as in America, that research requires very powerful computers. The Institute has a 1-petaflop3 capable supercomputer, used for simulating tests of nuclear weapons designs.

But that didn’t stop engineers at the Institute from trying to use the Institute’s supercomputer for cryptocurrency mining. For those readers who haven’t been following the issue, “cryptocurrency mining” is a misnomer for providing accounting services for a cryptocurrency. The more computer power you can contribute, the more money you can make. Anyone with a reasonably powerful home computer and decent bandwidth can make somewhere between $0.10 and $0.50 per day.

The Institute’s supercomputer is likely a million to ten million times faster than any home computer you or WC would own. Do the math.

According to the Russian news service Interfax, someone at the Institute attempted to connect the supercomputer to the Internet, and that attempt was detected by the FSB, the Russian Federal Security Service, launching an investigation. The Russian authorities aren’t talking about who was arrested or how many were involved. But WC suspects whatever Putin is using for the Gulags these days is going to get some new guests. You have to wonder how they thought they could get away with it. Or who didn’t stay bribed.

Oddly, despite being a closed city, Sarov is home to a public museum, the Russia Museum of Nuclear Weapons, where you can view mockups of famous Soviet nuclear weapons. Like Tsar Bomba, pictured above. ↩

A 1 petaFLOPS (PFLOPS) computer system is capable of performing one quadrillion (1015) floating-point operations per second. If you performed one math calculation a second for 34 million years, that’s one PFLOP. That’s fast but not really fast; current record speeds are in the range of 33 PFLOPS. ↩

]]>https://wickershamsconscience.wordpress.com/2018/02/12/those-silly-rooskis-cryptocurrency-mining-from-sarov/feed/0Tsar_Bomba_RevisedwickershamsconscienceA reproduction of the Tsar Bomba, the biggest nuclear weapon ever detonated, at the Nuclear Weapons Museum at RFNC-VNIIEF in Sarov (via Wikimedia)More Hoodieshttps://wickershamsconscience.wordpress.com/2018/02/11/more-hoodies/
https://wickershamsconscience.wordpress.com/2018/02/11/more-hoodies/#respondSun, 11 Feb 2018 13:15:41 +0000http://wickershamsconscience.wordpress.com/?p=71923About this time of winter every year, WC starts to get twitchy for spring migration. Sure, winter birds are nice, but if you want color, if you want variety, if you want tons of birds, you want spring migration. Because WC has chronically bad judgment, his bird photography trips start a long time before spring migration. As in this past Friday. There weren’t any spring birds, but there were some Hooded Mergansers, “Hoodies” in birder slang.

Two Hens and a Drake Hooded Mergansers, Boise, Idaho

Hoodies are a bit unusual because they nest in cavities in trees, laying almost spherical eggs. They aren’t the only duck to cavity nest, but they are the only one to lay spherical eggs. They are also the only member of the merganser family confined to North America.

Drake Hooded Mergansers, Boise, Idaho

One of the striking things about watching Hoodies, especially drakes, is the wide variety of positions their hoods – the white and black crest – can take. This is a mediocre photo, but it does show some of that variety.

Drake Hooded Mergansers, Boise, Idaho

Those hoods are used extensively in courtship . But that’s a ways off still. Because it isn’t yet spring.

Bad puns aside, this species is rare in southeastern Idaho. And controversial. Range expansion into the Pacific Northwest has brought the Barred Owl into contact with the closely related cousin, the Spotted Owl. The more aggressive Barred Owl has been known to displace and even hybridize with the Spotted Owl, a further threat to that already endangered species.

Barred Owl, Boise, Idaho

This is North America’s third largest owl by size, smaller than the Great Grey Owl and Great-horned Owl. It’s a generalist predator, using a wide variety of habitats and a wide variety of prey. While Birds of North America and other references say it “Generally avoids areas near human habitation,” in WC’s experience it’s pretty tolerant of human activity. Three of WC’s sets of photographs of the species were in noisy, near-urban areas. One was less than a quarter mile from SeaTac International Airport, in Seattle.

]]>https://wickershamsconscience.wordpress.com/2018/02/10/return-of-bird-of-the-week-barred-owl/feed/1BAOW20180209-2460wickershamsconscienceBarred Owl, Boise, IdahoBarred Owl, Boise, IdahoTrain ‘Em Up Younghttps://wickershamsconscience.wordpress.com/2018/02/09/train-em-up-young/
https://wickershamsconscience.wordpress.com/2018/02/09/train-em-up-young/#commentsFri, 09 Feb 2018 13:15:49 +0000http://wickershamsconscience.wordpress.com/?p=71906WC has grave doubts about capitalism. Certainly when unregulated, it can be horrific. Read Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle if you think otherwise. The late Larry Carpenter, a sometime client of WC’s, said that made WC a Communist. Perhaps not.

The problem for WC has always been that he doesn’t have a particularly good alternative. Particularly now, when the pendulum of government regulation has swung to a low point, it’s impossible for anyone with a social conscience to feel comfortable with capitalism’s excesses. WC isn’t the only one with ambivalent feelings about the ethos.

The Girl Scouts train their members in capitalism starting young. Each year, they send squadrons – battalions – of young entrepreneurs off to flog girl scout cookies to the masses. WC suspects that a substantial part of the extra weight he packs around is traceable to girl scout cookies. Specifically, Tagalongs, a/k/a/ Peanut Butter Patties.

But WC has digressed. This blog post is about unease with capitalism, not unease about the dubious nutritional qualities of Tagalongs.

Unrestrained capitalism says that a Girl Scout who sets up a cookie stand outside of a marijuana shop in San Diego is exemplary, focused on maximizing sales by targeting a munchies-plagued potential customer base. Unrestrained capitalism would applaud her for selling 312 boxes of cookies in less than six hours. Talk about knowing your market.

Targeting your market, Girl Scout style

And yet in some of us, at least, there’s a bit of unease.1 The national organization, Girl Scouts of the USA, has apparently punted the issue to the local communities. According to the New York Times,

“This is kind of a community issue,” said Mike Lopes, a spokesman for the Girl Scouts of the USA. “For the most part, it’s not any different than selling in front of any other kind of shop. It just happens to be a marijuana dispensary.”

That comment probably qualifies as profoundly ignorant or profoundly disingenuous. And certainly unhelpful to local Girl Scout organizations struggling with what they may be teaching to their youngsters. Colorado has flopped around on the issue. The state organizations in Oregon, Washington and Alaska apparently have no official position.

But there’s that sense of unease, isn’t there? Exactly what are we teaching here?

There’s the whole separate issue of revenues. Only 10-15% of the total sales stays with the girl scout troop that makes the sales. The rest goes to the regional council and the manufacturer. ↩

You’ve probably never heard of Gary Grimm. WC met him when Grimm was the director of the newly-created Oregon Outdoor Program at the University of Oregon in 1968. He put together the most amazing trips:

A float down the Owhyee River

A spring ski/climb of all Three Sisters

A cross-country ski trip around the rim of Crater Lake

A fly-fishing float trip down the Metolius and McKenzie Rivers (WC’s introduction to steelhead trout)

Later WC led a couple of trips for the Outdoor Program, including ice-climbing instruction on Collier Glacier,1 a summit run on Mt. Jefferson and a cakewalk climb of Mt. Hood from Timberline Lodge. There were other trips with Grimm: a couple of beach hikes in the nascent Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area and countless bicycle trips. Gary had developed a careful, safety-focused program and made it work. It was likely the first university program of its kind in the United States and it speaks well from Grimm’s powers of persuasion that he talked the inflexible, closed-minded Oregon university system into the idea..

A few weeks before WC led his first trip – the glacier-climbing/crevasse rescue course on Collier Glacier – WC and Gary did a long bike ride together, up into the Coburg Hills east of Eugene. This was prior to mountain bikes; we were on ten-speed “English racers,” tracking up a jeep trail and then down to the Mohawk River Valley and back through Springfield. On a gorgeous spring day, we biked, walked some steep stretches and the whole way Gary asked WC about his experience, ran hypotheticals by WC and talked about Grimm’s goals for the Outdoor Program. It’s one of WC’s best memories of Oregon, and it was only much later that WC figured out how thoroughly Grimm vetted WC as a possible trip leader.

After graduation, WC lost touch with Grimm. When WC met the future Mrs. WC, who had attended and later worked for Boise State University, WC was surprised to learn Grimm had moved to Boise in the mid-1980s. You wouldn’t have thought you pry Grimm out of Oregon with a crowbar.

In Idaho, Grimm and his partner, Katy Flanagan, pioneered 3D Interative and multi-media presentations. There’s a wealth of content at their website, Mountain Visions.

It was a treat to get to see Grimm briefly just a few months before he died. We didn’t get a chance to talk much, but we did get to reminisce a bit about those wonderful trips back at Oregon.

As much as anyone WC has known, Gary Grimm gave his life and career to the environment and conservation in the Pacific Northwest. WC’s sympathies to his widow, Katy Flanagan.

Grimm talked the talk and walked the walk. R.I.P., Gary.

A glacier that has nearly vanished. It’s little more than a patch of moraine-covered ice today. The nearly hundred foot deep crevasses where we practiced crevasse rescue are long gone. ↩

]]>GaryGrimmBackpackwickershamsconscienceGary Grimm doing what he loved best